Death by burning, metonymically referred to by the faggots which fuel the fire

Ashen faggot (or ashton fagot), Christmas wassail tradition in the West Country of England

a discarded cigarette end

Faggot Hill, a summit in Massachusetts, United States

Faggot (slang)

Faggot, often shortened to fag, is a pejorative term used chiefly in North America primarily to refer to a gay man. Alongside its use to refer to gay men in particular, it may also be used as a pejorative term for a "repellent male" or a homosexual person of either gender. Its use has spread from the United States to varying extents elsewhere in the English-speaking world through mass culture, including film, music, and the Internet.

It may also be used as a generic insult, for example, " idiot," although more offensive in nature.

Faggot (disambiguation)

Redirect Faggot

Faggot (unit)

A faggot, in the meaning of "bundle", is an archaic English unit applied to bundles of certain items. Alternate spellings in Early Modern English include fagate, faget, fagett, faggott, fagot, fagatt, fagott, ffagott, and faggat.

Sometimes called a short faggot, a faggot of sticks equals a bundle of wood sticks or billets that is in length and in circumference. The measurement was standardised in ordinances by 1474. A small short faggot was also called a nicket. A brush-faggot (sometimes shortened to brush) was a bundle of similar size made of brushwood.

A long faggot of sticks equals a bundle larger than long. In a book on slang used at Winchester College fire-dogs were fire baskets ( andirons) that could hold long faggots, and half-faggots were smaller andirons that could only hold short faggots, and were later converted for use with coal.

A long faggot was also called a kidd faggot kid, kide or kidde being Middle English for firewood in bundles.

A fascine (or bavin) is a type of long faggot which is approximately long and in diameter and used to maintain earthworks such as trenches.

A faggot was also a unit of weight used to measure iron or steel rods or bars totaling .

Faggot (food)

Faggots are a traditional dish in the UK, especially South and Mid Wales and the Midlands of England. It is made from meat off-cuts and offal, especially pork. A faggot is traditionally made from pig's heart, liver and fatty belly meat or bacon minced together, with herbs added for flavouring and sometimes bread crumbs.

Faggots originated as a traditional cheap food of ordinary country people in Western England, particularly west Wiltshire and the West Midlands. Their popularity spread from there, especially to South Wales in the mid-nineteenth century, when many agricultural workers left the land to work in the rapidly expanding industry and mines of that area. Faggots are also known as "ducks" in the Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire, often as "Savoury Ducks". The first use of the term in print was in the Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser of Saturday 3 June 1843, a news report of a gluttonous man who ate twenty of them.

The first use in print cited in the Oxford English Dictionary is in 1851, from Henry Mayhew, where he describes a dish identical to the modern product with chopped liver and lights in an outer wrapper of caul. This was in London.

Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary

faggot

late 13c., "bundle of twigs bound up," also fagald, faggald, from Old French fagot "bundle of sticks" (13c.), of uncertain origin, probably from Italian faggotto "bundle of sticks," diminutive of Vulgar Latin *facus, from Latin fascis "bundle of wood" (see fasces).\n

\nEspecially used for burning heretics (emblematic of this from 1550s), so that phrase fire and faggot was used to indicate "punishment of a heretic." Heretics who recanted were required to wear an embroidered figure of a faggot on the sleeve as an emblem and reminder of what they deserved.

faggot

"male homosexual," 1914, American English slang, probably from earlier contemptuous term for "woman" (1590s), especially an old and unpleasant one, in reference to faggot (n.1) "bundle of sticks," as something awkward that has to be carried (compare baggage "worthless woman," 1590s). It may also be reinforced by Yiddish faygele "homosexual" (n.), literally "little bird." It also may have roots in British public school slang noun fag "a junior who does certain duties for a senior" (1785), with suggestions of "catamite," from fag (v.). This also spun off a verb (see fag (v.2).He [the prefect] used to fag me to blow the chapel organ for him. ["Boy's Own Paper," 1889]Other obsolete British senses of faggot were "man hired into military service merely to fill out the ranks at muster" (1700) and "vote manufactured for party purposes" (1817).\n

\nThe explanation that male homosexuals were called faggots because they were burned at the stake as punishment is an etymological urban legend. Burning sometimes was a punishment meted out to homosexuals in Christian Europe (on the suggestion of the Biblical fate of Sodom and Gomorrah), but in England, where parliament had made homosexuality a capital offense in 1533, hanging was the method prescribed. Use of faggot in connection with public executions had long been obscure English historical trivia by the time the word began to be used for "male homosexual" in 20th century American slang, whereas the contemptuous slang word for "woman" (in common with the other possible sources or influences listed here) was in active use early 20c., by D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, among others.

Related phrases:

The Collaborative International Dictionary

faggot

faggot \fag"got\ (f[a^]g"[u^]t), n. [perh. from fagot[5], a
shriveled old woman.]
a male homosexual; -- always used disparagingly and
considered offensive. [Slang, disparaging]

Syn: fagot, fag, fairy, pansy, queer, poof, poove, pouf.

2. a bundle of sticks and branches bound together; -- same as
fagot[1].

Syn: fagot.

Wiktionary

faggot

n. 1 (context rare dated in US English) A burning or smouldering piece of firewood. 2 (context chiefly British English) A bundle of sticks tied together. (qualifier: Some sources specify that a ''faggot'' is tied with two bands or withes, whereas a ''bavin'' is tied with just one.) vb. (alternative form of fagot English)

Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English

faggot

noun

EXAMPLES FROM CORPUS

▪ There was cold faggot with apple chutney, home made of course.

Usage examples of "faggot".

I once saw this same beseeching looseness of eye and mouth in the face of a ragged little faggot on Sunset Boulevard, scorched and peed-on and limping back for more.

Here too you find the heavy faggot hangouts, the Spike, the Water Closet, the Mother Load.

I tell you, I went up those steps faster than a scalded faggot, propelled by a barbarous diuretic terror on behalf of my exposed rear end.

I suppose your standard Manhattan faggot might look in here for a final white wine en route to a dungeon appointment or death-pact rendezvous at the Water Closet or the Mother Load.

The squadcar that had panicked me was on quite another errand, what looked like a faggot tiff or atrocity on Gay Street.

The circle of constables surrounding the place of execution opened to allow the cart to pass within, and in so doing disclosed the pile of faggots, and the post rising above it, to which was attached a hoop that was to clasp the waist of the victim and prevent her from sinking in shame and anguish into the element that surged up from below.

Then the latter stepped upon the pile of faggots and drew close to the poor woman.

The attempts made to level the pyre only served to scatter the blazing faggots, endangering those who stood near, and such as were thrust into dangerous proximity by the press of the crowd.

I will build up, and you toss in the sand, and heap the faggots over the place.

Not content with this, she cut the binding withy of the faggots, and strewed the contents over the spot.

But this woman was literally burnt alive: for the executioner letting go the rope sooner than usual, in consequence of the flames reaching his hands, the fire burnt fiercely round her, and the spectators beheld her pushing away the faggots, while she rent the air with her cries and lamentations.

I think that he had been at the trial, but I know that he was at the execution, and saw the wretched woman fixed to the stake, fire put to the faggots, and her body burnt.

They fixed her neck by a noose to the stake, and then set fire to the faggots and burnt her.

After the lapse of a sufficient time to extinguish life, faggots were piled around her, and over her head, so that the person was completely covered.

The rosy buds all gone brown and spread out blobs and on the hills nought but dry flag and faggots that would catch at first fire.